In the years Corra Group has been in operation, we find it uncanny that we can go for weeks and months without conducting a background check that will turn up a sexual offender. Then we will suddenly get a flurry of employment candidates who are convicted sex offenders. These convicted sex offenders, oddly enough, are not derived from anyone particular client, but form several clients in different parts of the country who are conducting preemployment screening checks around the same time. It’s is something in the cosmos kicks in and suddenly we have background screening returns on several sex offenders.
When it comes to sex offenders, some people are more sympathetic than others. I should say perhaps maybe more compassionate than others. But since a majority of the sex offenses are against women and children, most employers and their work staff take a dim view of sex offenders seeking employment. Hiring a convicted sex offender can be toxic to the workplace. Simply put, many women despise a sex offender and more than a few men wish to inflict anything from verbal abuse to bodily harm. In all, hiring a sex offender is difficult at best and your employee morale can sink faster than a diving submarine. One employees learn a sexual offender has been hired, often that new hire becomes the central top of conversation. Your work staff is distracted as its focus is transferred from their responsibilities to something that hits them on a gut level.
Sexual offenders can be elusive. They can move around from state to state and not be detected for many months and even many years. In the case of one man, he spent twenty nine years as a fugitive. According to an article in the Orange County Register, the man assaulted three girls in the mid-seventies but wasn’t arrested and convicted in 2006, after being picked up in Florida. He now faces new criminal charges.
I would like to say this is a rare occasion, but not really. Not all that long ago we had one convicted sex offender applying for a job in a city park where children played. His perfect hunting ground. The city was about to give him this rather menial job, until they conducted his background check and we notified them of his past criminal convictions. We had another who moved from one state to another, and when a background check turned up previous convictions for sexual offenses, the employment candidate was asked why didn’t you reveal these criminal records. He told the Human Resources manager he was trying to make a new start.
So this is what you are facing out there. It is something to take note of. As I noted earlier, not all employees will take kindly to an employer hiring a sex offender. It can diminish morale and may instigate workplace violence.
So check them out before you hire.
